


Save Our Souls

by timetospy



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon-Typical Violence, Immortal James Bond, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, POV First Person, sort-of soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 11:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6954457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetospy/pseuds/timetospy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time I save your life, it’s an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Our Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalescentgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentgold/gifts).



> This began life as a [tumblr prompt](http://timetospy.tumblr.com/post/144784269804/prompt-time-traveling-q-who-shows-up-randomly-out) from [opalescentgold](http://opalescentgold.tumblr.com). It's not a direct fill, but it was the impetus behind the fic.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to the best beta/editor I could ever want, [jordankaine](http://jordankaine.tumblr.com), who not only makes my writing better, but is also an amazing friend. *hugs*

_ 1075 _

The first time I save your life, it’s an accident. I stumble backwards into you while fending off a blow from a man twice my size. You lose your footing, falling to your knees in the churned earth, the field turned to mud by the blood and sweat of a thousand men. A sword slices through the air just above your head as you land. 

You turn, searching for your enemy, but your eyes find me instead.  They are the brightest blue I’ve ever seen, like the sky on a perfect summer’s day. Everything seems to stop around us, as though God has reached his hand down and frozen swords mid-swing by his divine power. Even my heart seems to have ceased its beating.

You look up at me, and your eyes widen, your hand reaches out, and everything comes crashing back into motion.

I am not fast enough, and the sword’s point makes contact before I realize what’s happened.

The pain lasts for only a moment. I’m more numb than anything, not at all like mashing your finger with a rounding hammer. I can be so clumsy when I’m distracted. I think I smile before the blackness swallows me.

  
  


_ 1353 _

The second time I save your life, I speak Poitevin and you don’t understand a word of it. But I understand the frantic gestures and the intensity in your eyes, and I open the root cellar under my father’s barn and you duck inside just as Parisian soldiers ride by in clanking armor, banners fluttering in the wind, followed by a line of infantry and archers. They pass by without so much as a sideways glance, for which I am extraordinarily grateful.

Your eyes remind me of a summer sky, and it all seems terribly familiar, but I can’t quite decide why. I’m fairly certain you’re English, but I can’t bring myself to care that you’re supposed to be my enemy. The wars of Kings have yet to scorch our small valley, for which I am thankful daily, and it all seems so very far removed from my daily routine.

I sneak you bread and cheese, then sit and watch you eat. You attack the bread as though you haven’t tasted any in weeks. Perhaps you haven’t. The thought makes my heart ache in a way I don’t understand. 

After the first three days, you smile and nod when I enter. After a week, you pat the ground next to you and we sit side-by-side and share the small loaf of bread. During the second week, I manage to smuggle a flagon of beer and your face lights up when you realize what it is. You teach me the English word for it, and it feels strange on my tongue, and you laugh when I try to say it. You sound just as ridiculous when you try my language, though, and we laugh together for a while. I like the way your face looks when you laugh, all lines and creases, the way your eyes get small and bright. 

We clasp hands when you leave, a small satchel of food over your shoulder, what I could spare without raising suspicions. I realize after you’ve walked out of sight over the hill that I never did learn your name.

  
  
  
  


_ 1513 _

The third time I save your life, it’s with a vengeance. 

I’m watching you again, sitting there, stirring the coals in front of your tent in just your shirtsleeves. I admire the broad expanse of your back as it bends over the fire. I’ve spoken to you maybe a handful of times, usually about something mundane, like food or weather, but you don’t seem to notice me the way I notice you. That’s fine. I don’t expect you to. 

I forget to watch where I am going because I am too busy memorizing the way your shoulders move under the thin fabric of your shirt. I trip over a tent peg and spill water on your musket. The pan and slow match are soaked. You are livid. You stomp through the camp and kick at a cooking pot, which does not roll over obligingly, and you curse at it.  I try desperately not to laugh, but fail, and for a moment I am afraid that you will kick  _ me _ instead. But you don’t. You double up in laughter, and we joke about cooking pots being stronger than they look. And perhaps they would make better soldiers than us, come to that. 

The lines and creases of your face as you laugh look like home, but I don’t know why, and I am too busy trying to ignore how close you suddenly are to ponder it much. 

I ask to see your musket, to distract myself, and you hand it over with a shrug. 

“You could not make it worse, I suppose,” you say. 

“Oh, I could. But I shan’t.”

You chuckle again, and my skin warms at the sound.

I’m rather clever with these, actually. When the gunsmith at home is overworked, he sends for me, though I have never apprenticed for the trade. The weapon is in astonishingly good shape. You know how to care for a musket. I pull a length of slow match from my pouch and with nimble fingers and the point of my knife I replace the soaked cable with dry, wipe the last of the water out of the pan with the cuff of my shirt, and hand it back to you.

You whistle softly, a smirk pulling at the corner of your mouth, and take the weapon from my fingers. Our hands brush, and I swear it feels the way lightning looks when it arcs across the sky in long jagged bolts. 

“You’re quite good,” you say, and smile into my eyes.

“Thank you,” I mumble at the dirt between our feet. I stare at your boots, your knees. You clap me on the shoulder. My skin burns, and I can feel the press of your fingers the rest of the afternoon.

We march the next day, to the bottom of a small hill. It is brutally obvious that we are sorely outnumbered, but we line up bravely regardless. I try not to wonder if this is what my father meant when he sent me along and told me that military service would ‘make a man of me.’

If slaughtering brothers, fathers, husbands is becoming a man, I think I’d rather remain a boy.

I stand, staring south toward a line of Scots flying banners and staring back at us. You are standing behind me.

“And now we shall lay our fate in the lap of God,” you murmur into my ear. A shiver runs down my spine, but before I can turn to offer you luck, the signal sounds from the rear and we rush forward, bellowing our battle cry. 

I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid being impaled on a pike. I also don’t know how much of the blood covering my sleeves is my own. The gash on my forehead is still oozing across my face. The bitter tang of it clings to the back of my tongue. Through the sting of blood and sweat in my eyes, I find you. Two men have you pressed onto the ground, but you are fighting valiantly back, kicking at them, defending yourself with bill and dagger. 

The sight sends a flood of anger through my limbs. I scream and rush at them, hacking at the space between helmet and breastplate, and the flow of blood turns the earth to mud. 

My chest heaves as the bodies fall, heads all but severed. You are standing beside me, staring at me with a look of awe and possibly a bit of fear. I don’t blame you for that. I didn’t think I could do it either.

We remain close until the battle is over at sundown, and we are both covered in mud and sweat and worse, but we are alive. We share a smile, an embrace.

We have won the day, the Scots have fled.

The next morning, you seek me out. There are no words, what words could there be? But you nod, and we work side-by-side when it comes time to dig the graves. 

Our small company is disbanded, and I return a man to my father’s estate. You continue on to France. I want you to stay, tell you there is a place in our household for a man who can hunt. You say that war is in your blood, that you know no other life.

“Learn, then,” I say. It is ridiculous and selfish, and I have no explanation for why I feel hollow when I think of your leaving.

“I will see you again,” you say, and smile, hitching your satchel into place over your shoulder. I watch you walk away until you crest the hill at the edge of our property. I crawl into the root cellar beneath the barn to weep.

It is the following winter when I succumb to the fever. Your eyes and your smile have haunted my dreams for months. Perhaps we will see each other again in Heaven.

  
  


_ 1735 _

The fourth time I save your life, it is on a ship. We are sailing to the American colonies, a bit drunk on hope and the rum you’ve hidden away in your steamer. We stumble onto the deck, arm-in-arm, laughing together. No one stares at us, cruelty and hatred burning behind their eyes. It is a welcome change.

I’m sorry we had to leave England, but this is a grand adventure for the two of us, isn’t it? I lean a bit too heavily into your side as we walk along the deck. You took the last of your income to purchase this passage, telling me that we should spend these weeks in comfort, because although opportunity abounds in New York, it is hard won. 

I know this, and I know you mean for this to be a holiday, but I still can’t believe you spent all that money on the voyage when we both would have survived the journey in steerage.

I am grateful for the stateroom to ourselves, however. It gives us a privacy rarely afforded, and falling asleep in your arms is everything I ever dreamed it would be.

I don’t expect us to be welcomed into the colonies with open arms, but at least we will be free of my father and that dreadful Angelique. I would choose you a thousand times over land and title and children.

The deck is slick with spray, and our shoes struggle for purchase on the boards. It is dark, the sky is clear, the breeze is cool as it brushes its fingers across my cheeks.

The number of stars in the sky is incalculable, though we both attempt it, losing count and beginning again. I laugh when you gesture toward a particularly thick patch of stars and wave your hand.

“Oh, a million over there,” you say, wrinkling your nose and shrugging. Your expression makes me want to kiss you, but we are not alone on deck, so I cannot. It is a pity, your mouth craves kisses.

Later, as we lie in the cramped bed, drinking the last of the rum, you roll onto your side, propping your head on your hand. You give me a considering look for several long moments.

“You saved my life, ” you say, a finger tracing the lines of my chest.

“I’m not prone to feats of heroics. How do you mean?” I wriggle closer to your warmth, soothed by the scent of you.

“You gave me the strength I needed.” You pause to kiss me fiercely. “Your courage always gives me strength.”

I frown. This does not feel like courage to me. It feels like selfishness and possibly cowardice. But then you grin at me, and it’s all rakish bravado, and my heart feels like it’s expanding out of my chest, and I don’t care much about bravery or selfishness anymore.

We fall asleep a tangle of limbs, my head resting on your chest. The rhythm of your heart is a lullaby more potent than the sea herself.

Three days later, there is a storm. The ship breaks apart. I shove you into the dinghy just as a wave crashes over the deck and sweeps it out from under my feet.

I cling to wreckage for four days before my body gives out. I don’t know if you’ve survived. I’m certain if you have, you think me drowned. With my last breath I pray that you’ve reached the colonies, even if it is without me.

 

_ 1916 _

The fifth time I save your life, it is in a trench near Somme. A bullet has pierced your shoulder, and I am pressing into the wound with all the force I can bring to bear. It’s not enough to stop the bleeding, but maybe it’s enough to keep you alive until the medics arrive. I want to move you, you’re lying in a puddle, the mud oozing around your body and that can’t be good for you, not with that bullet in your shoulder. 

You smile at me, though, through clenched teeth. We’ve been sharing a bunker for months, a bed for weeks. Somehow the rules of polite society don’t extend to the trenches in France. 

I can’t quite keep the tears in check.

“Geoff,” you breathe, and I’ve never hated the sound of my name on your lips more. 

“Shhhh. No, don’t talk. They’ll be here soon.” I pull one bloody hand away and run it over your forehead. “You’ll tell me everything when we’re back in London, yeah?” I smile, though the tears stream down in earnest now.

“Yeah,” you agree.

I bend down and brush a soft kiss to your temple. You taste like blood and gunpowder and the ubiquitous mud.

Your eyes soften at the contact, and you try to move to pull me close again, but I don’t let you. You have to lie still or you’ll bleed out under me, and I’d never forgive myself.

There’s a shout behind me, and I’m pulled roughly away from you, falling hard onto my backside in the mud as medics pile you onto a stretcher and carry you away.

I hear, weeks later, that you’re safely home in London. The thought makes me smile.

The next day, the Germans gas our trench. I never did tell you I love you.

  
  
  


_ 2016 _

I’m sitting alone on a cold cement floor, chained to the wall with a dog lead and handcuffs. It’s surprisingly effective.

The thugs grabbed me off the tube on my way into Six three weeks ago (I think it’s been three. Maybe more. Maybe less. It’s getting hard to tell), and chained me in a room and beat me, as if that would loosen my tongue. 

My arms are sore from hanging over my head. I should stand, but I’m so tired I wait until my fingers go numb to even try. I think I may have a broken rib, and I’m sure at least two of my toes will never be the same. Thank God they haven’t broken my hands, but I think that’s only because they’ve been told not to. 

The language they speak is one I’ve not learned, yet. Slavic, but far enough away from Russian that I can’t quite decipher the words. They scream at me in heavily accented English, though, so I’m sure to understand just how little they care about me. Except they wouldn’t bother feeding me if they intended to kill me, so there is a tiny shred of hope in all this.

And they’ve chained me low enough that I can sit, even if my hands end up dangling above my head, so there’s that. 

My fingers start to go numb and cold, and it’s time to stand. I roll gracelessly onto my knees and try to push myself to vertical. I cannot. I wobble, my head won’t stay on straight and it feels as though it’s floating about six inches above where it normally sits. My feet won’t connect to the floor properly. I probably don’t have much longer, less if they take me in for another round of ‘questions.’

I think of you for a while as I lean my head against the damp concrete block wall I’m chained to. I imagine your smile in the mornings when you kiss me awake. I can picture, with perfect clarity, every line, every crease, every wrinkle that you swear you don’t have but don’t really age you anyway. You have that kind of a face, you know? You’ll look fifty for a dozen more years, at least, while I will age overnight, going from being mistaken for a teenager (which I still tease you about; mercilessly when you’re being a troglodyte) to looking like I’m ninety in a few short years (if I make it that long). You keep telling me this won’t happen.. I keep applying Oil of Olay to try and stave off the inevitable. You pretend not to notice. I know you do anyway.

There’s a gunshot outside my door. That’s new. My head jerks up and I stare lasers at the lock. There’s pounding on the door.

“Q?”

Your voice. It’s your voice. A tiny part of my brain reminds me that I could be hallucinating at this point, it’s not beyond the realm of the possible, but I croak out ‘yes!’ anyway, just in case.

“Q! Thank God. I need you to back away from the door.” 

I can’t really move much, but I fall back onto my arse and scoot further away. My legs work well enough for this, even if they aren’t fully connected to my brain at the moment.

Two gunshots and the lock explodes. The door bursts in. It really is you, in your bespoke suit spattered in blood. You kneel next to me. The crease between your eyebrows deepens, and I want to smooth it away with my thumb like I always do, but my hands aren’t attached anymore.

My entire world becomes your eyes, blue and clear like the sky on a summer’s day.

“You came,” I mumble.

“Of course I came. It’s time to repay the favor.”

What you’re saying makes no sense, I must have misheard you.

“What?”

“You keep saving my life, but I’ve never been able to return the favor.”

“‘S my job,” I say, and frown.

“That’s not what I mean. I think it’s time I explained something to you, darling, but not now. Now I need you to turn away and pull your hands as close to your head as you can.”

I obey, and the gun cracks once more, and my hands fall into my lap, fingers stinging as the blood begins to flow into them again.

“Can you move at all?”

“Move? You’re alive! If you want I could fly,” I mumble, reciting the line from one of my favorite films. It is flippant and ridiculous, but it makes you smile and that’s all I really care.

“As you wish,” you say into my hair, and I can feel my lips trying to turn up in a smile.

You place my arms around your neck and sweep me up as if I weigh nothing. I bury my face in the crook of your neck, and you smell of blood and gunpowder and - incongruously - mud. Usually you smell of the sea, or woodsmoke.

“I won’t lose you again,” you murmur almost to yourself. “I can’t.”

I don’t have the strength to even question what you mean.

********

Three days later, I wake up in the Six medical ward. I’ve been here since you pulled me out of that hellhole in Bulgaria, and today is the first time I’ve woken to find you not ensconced in the chair beside the bed.

I would worry about that, except there’s a note taped to the bedside table that reads ‘went for coffee -J’ so I relax against the pillow and stare at the ceiling, counting the pockmarks in the tiles as though they’re stars.

I must drift off, because when I look over at the chair again, you’re there with a gigantic paper coffee cup in one hand and a paperback book in the other, and when I shift on the bed, you look up, and smile.

“Good morning,” you say, setting aside your book. “How would you like to hear a story?”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr for this fandom (and a couple others) is [here](http://timetospy.tumblr.com).


End file.
